Boys to Men

It was announced this week that Haley Joel Osment is joining the cast of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” on Broadway. It’s an odd thing watching child movie stars grow up, and the years of puberty are often the roughest. Osment, now twenty, was a prolific child actor. He got his start at age four in a Pizza Hut commercial; at age six, he played Forrest Gump, Jr. But it was M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense,” for which he received an Oscar nomination, that made him famous, at age eleven. Then came “Pay It Forward” and “A.I.,” followed by a nasty drunk-driving accident, in 2006. In “American Buffalo,” Osment plays the teen-ager who becomes embroiled in the nefarious plans of two junk-shop habitués—played by John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer. “American Buffalo” starts previews at the Belasco Theatre on October 31.